Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Better: Advice From A Man Who's Built An Ecosystem

Lithuanian Rokas Tamosiunas has built an emerging ecosystem in his home country from scratch, into an established, even if small one. When Tamosiunas co-founded Startup Highway, a Baltic accelerator and early stage fund in 2011, it was the first of its kind in Lithuania and one of the earliest in CEE (Central and Eastern Europe).

Tamosiunas was a pioneer in the tiny Baltic country when he founded his first startup, with a successful exit in 2010. “The words ‘startup’ and ‘mentor’ were not even in the national dictionary,” Tamosiunas recalls. He and his colleagues learned everything they could from Seedcamp and Techstars.

The idea to begin Startup Highway was inspired by the talent emerging from Lithuania, Tamosiunas says. “We noticed a trend - there was a Lithuanian in several of the top startup teams around Europe, so we decided we should create our own accelerator.”

None of the building blocks for an ecosystem – from mentorship to idea sharing to angel investment, existed. Tamosiunas and his colleagues constructed the foundation for the ecosystem that exists in Lithuania today.

Tamosiunas is now expanding his vision, with a recently structured regional VC fund, called Open Circle Capital, with partners in Lithuania, Finland and Denmark, due to launch next month.

Building an ecosystem from the ground up, in a country with a population of less than 3M has provided Tamosiunas with great insights for startups operating in other small markets: